Pamukkale - More Travertine

First were the travertines. Back in the day (when all the promotional photos were taken, and when Rick Steves was there with his camera crew), the pools were all open and full of people. Over the years, there's been a lot of damage to them, largely algae growth. Not sure how much of this is due to large numbers of people in the pools, since I normally associate excessive algae growth with phosphates. Anyway, now most of the travertine pools are off limits, and most of the water has been diverted in the hope that sunlight and dryness will bleach them white again. While not as beautiful in as the old photos, the formations are still incredible, and some do still hold water.

To allow visitors a similar experience of swimming in the pools, some concrete pools have been constructed along the road leading up through the natural pools. Incredibly, this isn't such a fake experience as you might imagine. The "fake" pools are overflowing with the same mineral-rich water, have the same fine mud bottom, and most astonishing, the travertine is growing off the concrete, at what we guess to be a very fast rate. So maybe these pools aren't so inauthentic after all. Is it really a fake pearl if you purposely put the sand in the oyster?

After hiking up the travertines hillside we wandered along to the right-hand side looking for better views of the travertines, with no luck. Then we found our way to the Antique Pool. This was portrayed to us as something fairly authentic where the old ruins had flooded and were now used as a swimming pool where you get to swim among the ancient fluted columns like you were at Atlantis or something. Well, that's not really what it seemed like. Closer inspection said it was $16 to swim in a skuzzy and overcrowded pool. In water that was reported to be basically as hot as the baking air. With fluted columns covered in green algae. It would have been a cool thing to have said we'd done, but other than that, it didn't look all that appealing.

We followed that by exploring the views out over the travertines going the other way from where we came up. These were better, and we also found a pool (not natural) where we could put our feet in for a few minutes to cool down.

Further along we found a bunch of overgrown travertine that looks like it hasn't had water flowing over it in quit a while. Yet evidently not a hugely long time, as it appears to have formed around a plastic bottle.

For one final stop before getting into the fake travertine pools, we went out on the point of land right near where we came up the travertines. We hadn't seen anyone out there so it didn't seem promising, but we'd booked ourselves on an 11:30 PM bus, so we had lots of time. And WOW, were we ever glad we did! These pools were spectacular and full of the loveliest blue water! Further around we were able to get a much better angle on the pools we'd seen on the way up, with no people in the way to boot. I think this place would have been truly breathtaking with all the pools full.

Since we still had lots of time, we deciding to try hiking up to the monument they built to St. Philip, to see it's unique octagonal shape and good views. We evidently took a wrong turn since we didn't find it, but we did find some nice views anyway.

We then went to a nice dinner. Kabobs and pizza, yum! Now we are at the bus station waiting for our overnight bus to our next destination (well, most of the way, we have to change at 5 or 6 am since we booked too late to be on the direct bus). It's gonna be a long night, I fear. Hopefully smelling good is not a requirement for riding the bus here...